60 Second Meditation

Too much stress? You need a simple stress meditation. Of course, learning to meditate might intimidate you, and it’s tough to find the time for daily meditation. A solution to both problems is a meditation you can learn right now, that will take a minute to do each day.

An Easy Stress Busting Meditation

Breathe through your nose and you’ll notice how your abdomen extends. Nose-breathing causes the diaphragm to pull air to the bottom of your lungs. This delivers a good dose of oxygen into your bloodstream and brain, and it also tends to relax you. Breathing through your nose is healthier, and it’s the basis of this one-minute meditation.

Here’s how you do it; close your eyes, sigh, and let the tension go out of your muscles. It may help to tense your muscles up first and then release that tension. Let go of your thoughts as much as possible and take four or five slow, deep breaths through your nose. Pay close attention to the rate and depth of your breathing.

Can Meditation Be This Easy?

The short answer is yes. No, you’re not likely to get you into a deep meditative state with this simple stress meditation. However, you will get benefits, including a clearer mind and a reduction in stress.

It helps to develop a “trigger” for your meditation. For example, do your four breaths when you get into the car, or right after lunch each day. These triggers are places or times that remind you, so your meditation becomes a habit.

You can say this isn’t “real” meditation, but there’s nothing wrong with enjoying the relaxation you’ll get from this technique. If you want, you can always pursue deeper meditation later. Meanwhile, remember that not everything has to be

Many people do not meditate because they think that they can’t fit it into their hectic daily schedule. What these people do not realize is that some forms of meditation do not require any extra time during your day. Here are a couple of ways to meditate on the go:

1. Walking Meditation – Walking meditation can be done any time you are walking as long as there are not too many people or other obstacles that will distract your attention. The concept behind walking meditation is that you should focus on the feeling in your legs as you walk, the sounds of things around you, and the rate of your breathing. The object is basically to clear your mind of all thoughts except for those basic thoughts connected to walking and your five senses. Exercise caution when practicing walking meditations in areas with a lot of vehicle traffic since it would be easy to zone out. Always pay attention to incoming traffic on the streets that you cross.

2. Downtime Meditation – Various forms of meditation (such as breathing meditation and awareness meditation) can be practiced for short periods of time during the day when you have a break from mental or physical responsibility. Examples of these times include waiting for food at a restaurant, being on hold during a phone call, riding (not driving) from place to place, in an elevator, and countless others. Simply spend a minute or two focusing on your breath. Be aware of all of the sights, sounds, smells, and anything else you find interesting around you. Doing this for short periods all day long will add up and help you to remain more relaxed and productive.

3. Waking Up/Falling Asleep – Most people experience a frequent inability to fall asleep or wake up easily the next day. It is not uncommon for people to lay in bed for an hour before falling asleep or remain half asleep in bed after their alarm goes off In the morning. Meditation during these times can be a useful tool for orienting your body and mind. Meditating as you try to go to sleep will help you relax, stimulating the release of the sleep promoting neurotransmitter melatonin. Meditating when you wake up provides a strong mental foundation for the rest of your day. By starting the day organized, relaxed, and deeply aware of the things around you you are preparing yourself to be productive and to manage stress effectively.

Experiment with these meditation techniques to find out which ones work best for you. There are nearly unlimited ways that you can come up with to meditate during your every day activities. Just remember that meditation is the art of looking deeply into things and devoting all of your concentration to something. There are no rules or limits to what you can concentrate on, when you can do it, or how you do it. Be creative and find as many ways as possible to stimulate your mind.

Many people are reluctant to accept the idea of meditation because they associate the term with a specific religious practice. Is meditation a religious practice? Well, it is and it isn’t. Meditation is a deeply personal experience and what you get out of it depends heavily on what you are trying to get out of it.

Meditation can be compared to a automobile or similar vehicle. The vehicle has the ability to take you down many roads leading to many places, but you ultimately decide where you will go using it. Meditation can lead to relaxation, increased concentration, and a deeper connection with any item or thought that you choose to meditate on. Many religions use varying forms of meditation in order to contemplate the items or concepts that are important to their individual tradition.

Many eastern religions (such as Buddhism and Hinduism) encourage meditating in order to free the mind of preconceived notions about reality. Other religions, such as Christianity, Islam, and Judaism encourage meditation through prayer. During this form of meditation many people devote their full concentration to their respective god or important aspects of their religious faith.

Non-religious people may choose to meditate for a variety of reasons. Anyone can take the time to look deeply into the world around them in order to realize the beauty and complexity of every day items and situations. This eventually leads to a greater understanding of the self, of others, and of reality as a whole.

When western scientists first began studying the personal effects of meditating in the 1970s they noticed that heart rate, perspiration, and other signs of emphasis decreased as the meditating person relaxed. Scientists, like Richard Davidson, PhD. (University of Badger State), have been considering the long-term effects of meditating on the body and the brain ever since.

In 1992 Davidson received an invitation from the 14th Dalai Lama to come to northern Republic of India and sketch the brains of Buddhist monks, the most dedicated practitioners of meditation in the world. Davidson traveled to Bharat with laptop computers, generators, and EEG recording equipment, initiating an ongoing project that would last for years. Now monks travel to his WI lab in order to collect the data that they need. While in a magnetic imaging machine the monks watch disturbing visual images as EEGs record their responses to understand how they regulate aroused reactions.

Any activeness, including meditating, will create new pathways and strengthen certain areas of the mind. “This fits into the whole neuroscience literature of expertise,” says Stephen Kosslyn, a Harvard neuroscientist, in a New York Times article, “taxi drivers deliberate for their spatial memory and concert musicians for their sense of pitch. If you do something, anything, even play Ping-Pong, for 20 years, eight hours a Day, there’s going to be something in your head that’s different from someone WHO didn’t do that. It’s just got to be.”

This means that every time you meditate you are creating new pathways and strengthening connections within your brain. The more often you meditate the easier it will be to access these newly created connections in your brain, and eventually your practice will lead to a heightened sense of peace and relaxation during your everyday activities.

What do you do when you’re unhappy? Do you go out for a meal, or go to the cinema? Do you go shopping? Perhaps you drink to overcome your unhappiness. Maybe you get a buzz from jogging or going to the gym. Whatever it is, scientists are in the process of proving that internal change is the only thing that can give you health and happiness. Everything else is an illusion.

What does this mean?
Your brain is the only thing that can keep you healthy and happy.

Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin and Jon Kabat-Zinn from the University of Massachusetts Medical Center have just completed some interesting research that can actually benefit you and I, and even change the way that we run our daily lives.

They took a group of 41 stressed, but otherwise healthy, individuals working in a biotechnology firm in Wisconsin. 25 were taught how to meditate. In this case they were taught mindfulness meditation. The group met for a 2.5 to 3 hour meditation class each week, and after six weeks they all attended a seven hour meditation retreat. In addition each member was asked to meditate at home for one hour a day using a guided meditation tape.

The other 16 were held as a control group and did not receive meditation training until the study was completed.

At the end of the eight week program, in November, they also gave all the participants a flu jab. They found that “The members of the meditation group had a significant increase in antibody titers” ..in other words, they have less chance of catching flu.

The bottom line appears to be; If you want to have good health and overcome the day by day blues and maintain happiness you should learn to meditate. When you meditate you change the way your brain operates.

In addition, they found the more you practice meditation the better your daily performance.

“What we found is that the long time practitioners showed brain activation on a scale we have never seen before. Their mental practice is having an effect on the brain in the same way golf or tennis practice will enhance performance.” It demonstrates that the brain is capable of being trained and physically modified in ways few people can imagine. (Richard Davidson)

So give yourself the space each day to train your brain. It works.

This article is designed to give you some insight into the relatively new technology of Binaural Beats. Binaural Beats are specific frequencies that can bring you into a profoundly deep state of meditation within minutes using the latest innovations in sound technology. They utilize a specific audio mixing technique designed to alter the listener’s brain wave activity. By sitting or lying down in a quiet environment and wearing headphones these beats can be used to create Alpha, Theta and Delta brainwave patterns.

When brainwave patterns change it has been documented that there is also a change in chemical reactions within the body which can have a profound effect on your entire physical structure. In effect these beats have the same impact and benefits of a deep meditative state akin to hypnologic trance or transcendental mediation. Now very few people can enter such deep states of hypnosis and transcendental meditation takes a lifetime to perfect. So the immediate benefits of using binaural beats is apparent.

An added benefit of using such technology is that the states it creates allow you to access the subconscious parts of the mind. Those parts that are subliminal and just below the conscious threshold. Binaural beats can be used with many other self improvement tools (such as subliminal recordings, affirmations or visualization etc.) to increase your personal development dramatically as it creates deep states of relaxation and can put you into Alpha and Theta states. Therefore they can be used as an aid to alter beliefs, heal emotional issues or create behaviour changes. They can even be used for a quick energy boost. It is believed that by using binaural beats you can:

1. Create deep states of meditation.
2. Boost your intelligence and creativity.
3. Slow aging.
4. Create remarkable emotional changes at a very deep level.
5. Eliminate Stress & anxiety.

The beauty of binaural beats is that they can be used to induce these states and create these changes with no effort on the part of the listener. You just wear a set of headphones and let the sound technology do the rest.

The discovery of binaural technology is mostly accredited to Dr. Gerald Oster. Oster first published research about binaural beats in 1973 in Scientific American after he had conducted extensive studies. However, this is not as well known, binaural beats where in fact first discovered as far back as 1839 by an Associate Professor, at the University of Berlin, called Heinrich Wilhelm Dove. Dove accidentally discovered that when two similar sounds, that are only slightly shifted in frequency, are given separately to left and right ear they cause a pulsation or beat type effect within the brain.

However, it was Dr. Oster who uncovered the full benefits of using this new technology when he discovered the effects that binaural beats have on the mind and body.

There are many producers of binaural beat technology competing in the market today. It is possible to create your own with the proper software. However, an in-depth knowledge of brainwave patterns and their effect on the mind and body is advisable before ever trying to create your own. There are many forum threads on the web that claim binaural beats have had a negative or even damaging effect on certain listeners. For that reason I believe it is safer to stick to the tried and tested pre-made recordings that are available for a reasonable fee. You can purchase separate binaural beat recordings to induce almost any emotional state or you can even enrol on a binaural beat program for self improvement that takes several years to complete.

I, myself, have no experience of any damaging effects due to the use of binaural beats. However, if you are using binaural beats for personal development purposes their use can be uncomfortable. All my experiences have been extremely positive, although not always pleasurable. Let me explain.

ECC machines have been used in the past to monitor the brain activity of life-long meditaters. While in a deep meditative state, these meditational experts, displayed alpha, theta and delta brainwave patterns. These are the very states that binaural beats create.

Alpha wave patterns in the brain occur in a relaxed state and during this time we are very susceptible to suggestion. This is the state that you enter during hypnosis. Theta brainwaves allow for the absorption of huge amounts of information while Delta brainwaves are most apparent when you enter a state of deep but dreamless sleep. It is the Delta state that is the main aim of such practices as transcendental meditation. Although for many entering the delta state while fully conscious can be very relaxing, for most it is not, for it is during such brain activity that internal change occurs.

By bringing the listener into this extremely deep state of meditation, binaural technology, can activate major positive changes in your emotional, mental and physical make-up. Now this can be a profoundly life altering experience. You will find past buried memories resurface as the beats direct your brain to restructure its neural network and raise your “comfort level” to a new high. After several listening session you find yourself less stressed out than before and your reaction to situations, that in the past would have sent you screaming round the halls, much more composed. The technology literally eliminates negative emotional, mental and physical patterns. The discomfort I spoke of earlier comes from the restructuring of your brain’s neural network as old buried uncomfortable memories are triggered in the brain before the connecting emotional response is wiped away. You are still left with the memory of the event but you no longer have any emotional attachment to it. Don’t worry, for some reason, it doesn’t affect positive memories! It may be due to the natural state of the mind and body, for this system of mind/body is always seeking equilibrium and harmony, which tends to lead to feelings of joy and happiness.

Binaural beats is a proven technology that can create brainwave changes which alter your mood and changes the chemical reactions in your body to encourage faster healing and harmonious interaction between cells. However, there is currently research being conducted to determine if these beats can actually direct the brain to reformat DNA encoding. If this is possible the possibilities are almost limitless – decrease in illness, genetic disorders, a reversal of aging etc.

If personal development and self improvement isn’t your main aim for investigating binaural beats (and don’t want to get younger) then the single recordings designed to induce specific mind/body changes is enough. You can get recordings for an energy boost, meditation, to spark the creative areas of the brain, induce deep sleep and even one that acts like a digital drug!

All these changes happen effortlessly and easily. All you need is a pair of stereo headphones and a comfortable chair. The recording does the rest.

Christians already use meditation as a way of getting closer to god God, the only difference is that they call it prayer. Like anyone else they use this meditation to clear their minds of the busy thoughts of the day and concentrate solely on what is important in their lives.

Centuries ago, monks began practicing Christian meditation by reading over verses in the Bible and then contemplating the messages that are found in it. Often, they would say the verses to God as a prayer, which is very similar to the meditative technique of using a “mantra”. In this way, the monks learned to speak to God in prayer, and learned how to tell God their own thoughts and concerns. By meditating on Bible verses and praying, the monks trained their minds to always think about doing positive things as a part of their everyday life. They called this “contemplation”, and it helped them to have a close, loving relationship with God.

By following this method of communicating with God, the monks created what is called the “ladder of prayer”. The rungs of the ladder included reading Bible verses, thinking about the truths in the verses, praying to God, and learning to think about God always.

Meditation is a group of mental training techniques. You can use meditation to improve mental health and capacities, and also to help improve the physical health. Some of these techniques are very simple, so you can learn them from a book or an article; others require guidance by a qualified meditation teacher.

WHAT IS MEDITATION?

During most forms of meditation practice you will do the following things in order to relax your mind:

1. You sit or lie in a relaxed position.
2. You breathe in deep breaths at regular intervals. When you breathe out you relax your muscles so that your lungs are empty, but without straining.
3. You try not to focus on problems or issues you are experiencing that are making you stressed.
4. You dedicate your complete concentration your thoughts on a sound, a word you repeat (known as a mantra), an image, an abstract concept or a feeling. Your whole attention should be pointed at the object you have chosen to concentrate on.
5. At first it will be hard to clear your mind of thoughts. When you experience a thought realize that you have experienced it but do not pursue it. Gently bring your attention back to your object of focus every time you find your mind wandering.

The different meditation techniques differ according to the degree of concentration, and how foreign thoughts are handled. By some techniques, the objective is to concentrate so intensely that no foreign thoughts occur at all.

In other techniques the concentration is more relaxed so that foreign thoughts easily pop up. When these foreign thoughts are discovered, one stops these and goes back to the pure meditation in a relaxed manner. Thoughts you experience will often be about things you have forgotten or suppressed, which can allow deep access to many memories you may have forgotten. This rediscovery can have a psychotherapeutic effect.

Meditation has been practiced around the world for thousands of years. It is a techinique used to quiet the mind and body, and to release stress. It can also bring focus and clarity, and often after meditating, problems that you have been struggling with miraculously become solved. Meditation has also been known to inspire people to write, and to spur lucrative business ideas as the subconscious mind comes to light.

One simple form of meditation requires you to sit in a quiet room, either on a pillow, cross-legged on the floor, or in a comfortable chair, making sure your spine is straight. It is advised that you use the same place every day. It is also suggested that you personalize your spot, by beautifying it with candles, flowers, and pictures of the people that you love.

The idea is to sit quietly, with your eyes closed and focus on a point inside of your head. Try not to think of anything in particular, but don’t try ‘not’ to think either. Allow your mind to become calm and peaceful. If you find that your mind is ‘chattering’ don’t try to control it, just let it finish what it is that it is working on, and it will eventually quiet down. It is recommended for beginners to begin with ten to twenty minute sessions each day. After awhile of doing this you will start to feel deep relaxation and joy during these sessions.

person meditating outside

Does it really matter where you meditate? I think it can. For some of us, being outside makes for not just a different meditation experience, but a more profound one. There are some good reasons for this.

Perhaps meditating in a quiet room with no sounds and nothing to distract is the easiest way, especially for beginners. It’s hard enough to quiet your mind without constant input from your surroundings. On the other hand, life is constant input, so if you want the peacefulness that comes from meditation to enter your life beyond your practice, perhaps learning to meditate despite surrounding sounds and movement is just what you need.

Meditating Outdoors

There’s a high bank on a river where I lived years ago. It was a five-minute walk from the house. There’s a level grassy spot at the top, looking down on the water fifty feet below. That is where I would go to sit. Often there was a breeze I could feel on my skin and hear in the surrounding trees. I also heard the water as it strained through some dead trees near the river bank. I smelled the dirt around me, and the odor of fish coming up from the water.

Meditating there wasn’t only pleasurable because of the environment, but also different from meditating in the silence of my home. There was more of a sense of experiencing the world without thought, without over-analyzing. Why? Perhaps simply because there was more to experience. There were the sounds, which included birds, and the occasional splashing of some animal in the river. There were things to smell and the feel of the grass.

I usually close my eyes when I meditate, because I am a very visually-oriented person, and find it easier to meditate this way. When I finished my meditation by the river, I would open my eyes, of course, but what I saw was always different from what was there when I started. Of course it was the same, but I was seeing it differently, as if for the first time. While difficult to explain, this is easy to recognize if you have had the experience.

It’s wonderful to look around as if seeing for the first time. You are seeing without preconception. I might see a deer on the opposite bank of the river, but the thought “deer” wouldn’t cross my mind, meaning it wouldn’t cloud my vision with any ideas about what a deer is or should be. The sounds and sensations were also “new.” I think this more direct experience of life is a profound demonstration of how much we normally “live” through our thoughts, somewhat detached from reality.

If you haven’t already tried it, why not get outside for your next meditation? Sit on a hill or in front of a garden, or try standing in front of a lake or pond when you meditate. The view will be wonderful when you open your eyes. There is nothing quite like meditating outdoors.